Chandrayaan-1 gets closer to Moon

BANGALORE: The fourth orbit-raising manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 was carried out on Wednesday which took the lunar spacecraft closer to the moon, the Indian Space Research Organisation said here.

During this operation at 0738 hours, the spacecraft's 440 Newton liquid engine was fired for about three minutes, the Bangalore-headquartered space agency said in a statement.

"With this, Chandrayaan-1 entered into a more elliptical orbit whose apogee (farthest point to earth) lies at 2,67,000 km while the perigee (nearest point to earth) lies at 465 km. Thus, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft's present orbit extends more than half the way to the moon," ISRO said.

In this orbit, the spacecraft takes about six days to go round the earth once.

The health of the spacecraft is being continuously monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) here with support from Indian Deep Space Network antennas at Byalalu near here.

ISRO said all systems on board the spacecraft are performing normally.

One more orbit raising manoeuvre is scheduled to send the spacecraft to the vicinity of the moon at a distance of about 3,84,000 km from the earth, it said.